Eva's Jarring Question Made Tim Stop In His Tracks

Tim, a widower, had been on several dating sites but so far had no dates. That’s when a fellow Knights of Columbus member intervened.

He said, “If you meet a woman you like, wouldn’t you want her to be Catholic?” Tim, now 64, recalled.

Tim responded, “Yes!”

His friend pointed him to CatholicMatch where he himself had met his wife. Tim registered but did not pay for a fully active account.

“I had been burned by the other site and did not want to waste my money. I figured I would see if there was anyone out there and I could send them emoticons,” he explains.

So when a pretty blonde in a neighboring city started sending him notes, Tim responded with emoticons. He sent a smiley face, a wink—even an emoticon of a rosary.

We are not amused

The recipient of the emoticons was not enamored. “I sent him several messages trying to break the ice. All I got in return was emoticons! He said NOTHING!” Eva recalled.

She decided to continue casting her net around CatholicMatch. But there was no one else who piqued her interest. So she kept sending “little hellos,” receiving nothing but emoticons in response from Tim.

“Finally, I got fed up,” she said.

Next time, instead of hello, she had a pointed question for Tim. She asked, "Can you even type?"

Tim got the message as he was driving to a Knights’ work project. It stopped him in his tracks—literally.

“I pulled over, entered my credit card, and sent her my phone number,” Tim said.

First dinner, drive, and quick kiss

One week later, in late August 2015, they had their first date at a Mexican restaurant. “I recognized her immediately, she was even prettier in person,” Tim said.

“I was like a school gal!” Eva, who is 63, added. “He was such a gentleman and so handsome! I knew it was a very special connection from the start.”

After dinner they went for a short drive and “shared a quick but romantic kiss,” Tim recalled.

That was Friday. Tim asked her on a second date for Saturday at a dedication for a new church. “A second date that was going to church. That’s testing the Lord and my date’s dedication to the Lord,” Tim said. “I knew this was a very special man,” Eva said of her reaction to the invitation.

“Prayer had worked again!” she added. Eva had been doing a lot of that.

Eva's history with online dating

Like Tim, she had been on several dating sites. She says she “really got burned several times by lies and deception.”

She turned to CatholicMatch a few months before Tim did, in winter 2015.

“I had become more active at my church and was attending daily Mass. I was determined to meet some nice Catholic guy who shared my faith journey,” Eva said. (Eva’s previous marriage ended in divorce and annulment.)

Once on the site, she found…nothing. The guys she met were either too far away or not interested enough to meet her.

Eva decided it was time for prayer and shut down her profile. “I found a great prayer about God sending you the right person at the right time…and quit looking for that Mr. Right,” she said.

That summer she attended the Eucharistic Congress in Atlanta.

“It was that day that began the greatest changes in my life!” Eva said.

At one of the vendor’s tables, she met a rep for CatholicMatch. She also was encouraged by meeting a couple that had met on CatholicMatch. The rep gave her a gift card, suggesting she give it another try.

Eva went home but she did not immediately use the gift card. Instead she continued to pray hard. “I spent the next two months praying, attending daily Mass, and socializing very little,” she said.

Finally, on August 1, she was ready. “I pulled that gift card out, wrote a new profile, and tried CatholicMatch again,” she said.

“Just like before, I searched, and up popped this handsome guy with the greatest smile (Tim) and he lived only 30 minutes away!” she said.

(Then came the frustration that he would only send her emoticons, but once she called him out on it with her jarring "Can you even type question" the rest is history).

Everyone assumed they were already married.

Tim and Eva’s relationship grew in the context of their faith. They attended Mass together, alternating between his parish and hers. “We made friends through his Knight brothers and my Saint Vincent de Paul friends,” she said.

An early date was a Knights' auction where attendees could bid on dinners hosted by parishioners for small guests. They won one of them and went. Neither of them knew the other guests, who assumed they were already married, such was the happiness Tim and Eva exuded.

Five days before Christmas Tim took Eva back to the Mexican restaurant where they first met. He had a big question for her. This time, the answer was yes.

Three months later, on March 19, they married.

“God has blessed us and I will always be thankful to CatholicMatch for being the stepping stone to finding my true faith and soulmate,” Eva said.